I am lucky, come from a rural area, graduated from a good university, majored in Electrical Engineering, come to U.S. as a graduate student in full scholarship, now a business owner in Silicon Valley. Familiar with SAT, GMAT, GRE, and all kind of tests in U.S. and China Here are my thoughts on gaokao.

1. This is one of few chances a kid from a poor family background has an opportunities to move ahead in a tightly controlled society.

2. For young people from rural area, exactly like this article said, because of ‘hukou’ system, that put students from rural areas at a steep disadvantage. It is 16 times easier for a Bejiing student to get a place at Tsinghua than it is for a student from Hunan, where there are few first-rate options.

3. Lots of students get extra points, because of all sorts of reasons; such as minority group, ‘3 good’ students. High ranking officials, all of sudden, put their kids in minority group, or some special provision to get extra points, a huge favor for the rich and powerful.

4. There is no consideration of leadership ability, innovation ability, dealing with other people, independent thinking, social relationship, etc. Exactly like this article said.

5. There is a lot of cheating going on, from the beginning to the end selection. The people make the questions in the exam giving hints to his selected few, of the questions to be giving. The person to take the exam can be hired, there are many loop holes.

6. One child policy make the only child in the family too much pressure to succeed, therefore, lots of students from the rich and powerful send their kids to oversea to avoid the cutting throat competition.

7. You only have one chance a year. If you missed a question that is weighed 25% of the test, you need to wait for another year.

I suggest the Chinese government

1. Abolish this one child policy; it creates a huge bureaucracy and unnecessary pressure to succeed.

2. Abolish the ‘hukou’ system, no more first class citizen, second class citizen, etc and another huge bureaucracy.

3. Abolish the once a year entrance exam. Just like SAT in U.S.A, Students can take tests multiple times in a year and use the best one.

4. Change the contents of the test, use some questions like GMAT, GRE, etc. to determine the appetite, the reasoning ability, no right answer, only best answer.

What you suggested are good for gaokao revolution and it also would bring some social problem in some ways.
It's a long way to establish a perfect gaokao system.
Actually, chinese gorvenment are moving, but the process is a little slow.

1. Abolishing the one child policy would only increase supposedly unfairness since the rich will the ones most capable of sending their multiple children to the best schools. There are already stories in rural areas where parents can only support one child at the expense of his siblings.

2. This makes sense.

3. Again, the rich will be the ones most prepared to take advantage of multiple testing. Furthermore, wouldn't it compound the problems of ensuring testing integrity?

4. 94% of the GRE takers are already literally acing the quantitative section. The verbal section is practically a grammar test. I don't see how this will make a difference from the Gaokao since I expect there to be very high correlation between the high-Gaokao scorers and the high GRE scorers.

I agree with the most of what you said, great experience sharing.however, the suggestions you mentioned:
1.abolish one child policy: more children would mean more intensive competition.
2.hukou system is a totally shame of China, but it's from our brother "russian", any idea what it is now in Russia?
3.Multitimes exams is highly recommented.
4.Chinese students are better performed than US in their high scholl phase, but worse after that, would should find out the reason and make ajustment...
Great sharing again!

That remind of of USA, every single gesture of China can interprete a "Threat" to his superier status.
And US university is the best, they took only the best, most powerful and the richest students!! Student like Bo GuaGua is always welcome to many university.

Maybe you can use "Guanxi" to enter the low level university, but never the top one. As time goes by, it will be easier and easier to get in that kind of low level university, as the amount of high school students is less and less(If I rememered correctly, nowdays the average percentage of high school students entering the university is around 70%). However, students still need a lot of efforts to enter the top one.

Guanxi does not work in China's Gaokao. You just cannot enter a college merely because of Guanxi. Everyone is equal. You must get sufficiently high grade to enter a good college.

In the U.S., if one's dad is rich, then his dad can donate a lot of money to an American private university and then he will be admitted in that university. Many Chinese rich send their kids to private American universities via this way. Money speaks, that is American way. However, this way does not work in China.

I passed Gaokao with a score ranking 3rd in my province. Although my family was among the 10% poorest Chinese families, Gaokao totally changed my life and my family's life.

If you are in a good high school, then you don't need to hire any tutor because instructors in public high schools are the best in China. To enter a good high school, you need to take an entrance exam and defeat other competitors. The exam is similar to Gaokao, which is also very fair to everyone.

"I passed Gaokao with a score ranking 3rd in my province. Although my family was among the 10% poorest Chinese families, Gaokao totally changed my life and my family's life"

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I have had a rather similar experience that you have described. I don't know if guanxi works or not in getting someone into a school, but it had no effect on my getting into the school I wanted (I was not aware of anyone in my university class used guanxi because we knew the test scores of each other).

Many criticized gaokao blaming it focusing too much on a student's memory but not enough on analytical skill. But I view it differently. To pass an exam of this type is to test the discipline and dedication to a given task of a student whose job for that task was to pass the exam with high scores on a given period of time of preparation, regardless if that task was for momery or for more creative thinking.

To me, gaokao is a training to take responsiblity and to manage time. It's not the only way to be sure, but it's a way that works for most.

American public junior high schools and high schools do not provide ENOUGH education to kids. They give too much SPARE TIME to kids. Then those families which are wealthy can hire tutors to teach their kids in the "spare time". Those families which cannot afford hiring tutors have to leave their kids hanging around with gangsters.

China is different. There is NO FREE TIME for kids. Teachers, no matter they are in good high schools or low-level high schools, must serve the kids 24-hours & 7 days. So no private tutor is needed. No time for kids to hanging around with gangsters and learning how to rob & murder a passer-by.

As long as one enters a good university via China's Gaokao, he will be able to get a good job. That is what I meant a chance to change the lives of the poor.

These days the gaokao seems to only be useful for middle and lower classes anyway. With 85% of high net worth individuals sending their kids abroad, that removes a large portion of potential competitors.

Having said that, why do you think the gaokao is the perfect method? It might be a good or even great way to test, but it measures a student's performance on 2 days out of their 12+ year academic career.

Why not make college admissions 2/3 based on school grades, and 1/3 based on gaokao score? This would be more fair to students from poor regions (with bad schools) who don't have the top tier AAA instructors that kids in Shandong have.

How is this more fair? Ideally, the Gaokao sends the smartest kids to the best colleges. It simply replaces the discrimination based on wealth to discrimination based on IQ (assuming that test-taking ability is a good proxy). It's really not the 18-year old's fault that his not as good at calculus as his friend.

Furthermore, the skills used for the Gaokao is not at all correlated with more productivity in the work place. So it's neither fair nor is it even useful for the general economy.

I don't like America's elementary education system. However, America's higher education system is better than that of China for now (not sure if it still true in the future). I plan to let my kids study in Chinese high schools and then send them to American colleges, and ask them to pursue American higher degrees (master, PhD), just as I did.

Things can change. America is in trouble now. It has already cut a lot of funding of R&D. After 10 years, maybe Chinese universities are better than American universities. Then I will ask my kids to take Gaokao to enter a top Chinese university instead of studying in the U.S.

There is no perfect system at all. As long as the majority of students selected by Gaokao is better than those failed in Gaokao in terms of productivity (and it is true), then Gaokao is a good system.

Gaokao system has flaws but overall it is still a fair and good system for the Chinese youth. Do you think democratic system is perfect - given the fact that a stupid American president Bush was elected via this system? The flaws of the democracy are much more than those of the Gaokao system.

In theory, your idea is good. However, in practice, the Gaokao system is still better than considering both school grades and Gaokao score.

The reason is that if school grades are considered, then rich families will bribe high-school teachers to give high grades to their kids. So in practice, your idea does not work to ensure the fairness of choosing good students into college.

Most of the Chinese are very pragmatic. Although we know that many methods are better than Gaokao IN THEORY. However, IN PRACTICE, Gaokao is the best method.

Many young people from rural area, because of ‘hukou’ system, that put students from rural areas at a steep disadvantage. It is 16 times easier for a Bejiing student to get a place at Tsinghua than it is for a student from Hunan. Actually, almost 25% to 40% of TsingHua students come from Beijing, it that fair?

You are ranked the 3rd in your province, so you can attend almost any university you like. But, look from a big picture, it is unfair to millions after millions of kids, just because they were born in a wrong place.

If a society can not let her people use his/her full potential, it is a huge waste.

You and I may be lucky; I have 3 sons, they all graduated from University of California at Berkeley, went to Stanford, Harvard, MIT, University of Paris and received all sorts of advanced degrees, one majored in Compute Science, another is Medical Doctor, the youngest also studied 'cell and molecules biology" pre-med, but, changed his mind, he wants to become a businessman to make lots of money.

Gaokao needs major change, the social policy also needs major change, such as one child policy, hukou system, etc... but the most of all is taking care of corruption in all level of government.

Ask if Hunan University would like to recruit the same number of student from Beijing as that from Hunan. Also ask if University of California would like to charge the same tuition to non-California students as that to students from California.

Beijing invested a lot of money in Tsinghua University. Isn't it fair for Beijing taxpayers to have more chance to send their kids to Tsinghua University than than other provinces? Certainly Tsinghua University also receives funding from the Chinese People's Central Government. However, Hunan University and other local universities also receive money from there. While you are pursuing fairness for students from rural areas, it creates another unfairness for Beijing tax payers.

There is no absolute fairness. As long as Tsinghua University still recruits students from the poorest region, then it has already been fair.

ChinaEagle, did you read the article part about Beijing kids doing so much better than Hunan kids? Rich families can just move to cities with great education systems then do better on the gaokao. Or they can hire excellent tutors. It's still based on money.

Do you know what is Hukou system in China? Moving to Beijing does not automatically gives one a chance to take Gaokao exam in Beijing. He must hold Hukou of Beijing. Even though you have money, you cannot simply buy a Hukou of Beijing.

Beijing tries to lure high-IQ talents by giving them Hukous. So if one holds a PhD degree from a top American university (just like me) or a top Chinese university, then he and his children can easily get Hukou of Beijing. Wealth is much less useful than talent in China.

Excellent tutors are in public schools (elementary schools and high schools). There are some private schools in China but their average quality is lower than that of public schools. This is the key difference between Chinese education system and American education system, where private schools are generally better than public schools.

Kids in China can go to a good public elementary school without paying any tuition. From the starting point, student from rich families do not get too much advantage in competition.

You're being disingenuous. You act like a Phd from the West is cheap or accessible to most Chinese. And yes, you can buy a hukou with a lot of money, I know people personally who have purchased hukou in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Just start up a front company and make some local "investments" and boom...you're a Shenzhener. Even more egregious are those who rush to Hong Kong to give birth so they get HK hukou. Either way, there are lots of ways to game the system if you are RICH. Based on my experience wealth is far more useful than talent in China.

Maybe I wasn't very clear about my point related to public schooling. A kid born in rural Guizhou has an extremely small chance of making it to Beida, not because he is stupid, but because no good teachers want to work for the poor salary in rural Guizhou. All the teachers who are excellent at teaching the gaokao will naturally go where they can get the best salary, which coincidentally is where the richest people live. Since the gaokao is the only measure of ability, nothing the kid can do will really fix their situation. What would you suggest a child in this situation do?

The US has this same problem with bad teachers inner city schools, and they have half-hearted programs to remedy this like Teach for America. But the big difference is that the teacher matters more in China, because everything rides on the single gaokao exam. A kid in Detroit has a chance to make it because his school might be terrible, but his grades, extracurriculars, and writing ability might still be good.

To be a Shenzhener, it is not enough "just start up a front company and make some local investments and boom". The start-up company must pay 0.3 million yuan total taxes in consecutive three years. So the minimum time length to get a Shenzhen Hukou is 3 years. However, a talented person can easily get a Shenzhen Hukou in one month. A talent also can easily get HK residence card.

You are wrong to say that "a kid born in rural Guizhou has an extremely small chance of making it to Beida". PKU and other top universities do not compare kids from rural areas with kids from urban areas. PKU allocates positions to different regions to ensure that students in all regions have chances to go to PKU. Given the fact that the number of Gaokao exam takers in rural areas is lower than that in urban areas, kids in rural areas actually have more chances to go to PKU. See:http://gaokao.eol.cn/gui_zhou_11381/20120530/t20120530_783085.shtml

To put in short, China's education system is much better than of the U.S.

" Less than 0.2% of gaokao takers will get into China’s top five universities. Graduate opportunities for students who attend a top university are dramatically different to those who don’t"
Uh Oh this sounds ridiculously similar to the Indian system and I empathize with the Chinese students. This is what happens when you have so many people competing in a single, common exam. The exam's focus shifts from selection to elimination, creativity to preparedness and from selecting best students to fittest students.

to be fair, i am sure there are 10's of millions of students competing for a few thousand spots at the top 5 schools. the population is over 1.6 billion... 0.2% is a useless statistic for dramatic purposes...

No, in this case percentages are a more appropriate measure than raw numbers. The sophist trick would be to use the very large raw number of students going to top schools to distract from the fact that they represent only a small proportion of total students.

The reason that a percentage figure is more appropriate here is that the claim is the system is only working well for a small number of students. That "small number" might be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, because the population is so large, but that does not make the fact that for each fortunate student there are about 499 for whom the system did not work.

No, in this case percentages are a more appropriate measure than raw numbers. The sophist trick would be to use the very large raw number of students going to top schools to distract from the fact that they represent only a small proportion of total students.

The reason that a percentage figure is more appropriate here is that the claim is the system is only working well for a small number of students. That "small number" might be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, because the population is so large, but that does not make the fact that for each fortunate student there are about 499 for whom the system did not work.

since you said it's a fair game, why use notorious again and again? I agree the gaokao is really really a memorable but no one want to return. but so far, as the trueth is, gaokao is the only way that can help some people get out of their poor hometown as the author mentioned. if you think the american style or canada style, i'm pretty sure people who are rich or who have very close relationship with senior people will get the best opportunity to have best education in China. it's truely unfair and will mean meaningless to many poor and weak students.
I'm welcome any discussion want2fly@gmail.com

To be fair, "notoriously" used in this article only serves to suggest the exam is famously tough to the extreme extent. The way to use this word in today's English is quite common.

People may criticize this exam system, alleging that it may not be able to pick up the best students. It is an extremely unfair assessment. Even if we are able to reach a broad consensus on the definition of a best student, some of its core criteria may prove to be difficult to measure. Even if we can measure them, as soon as the similar quantification process begins, the future students and their teachers may develop another new training process to master the new measurement system. Accepted that the new system is elusive at the moment, is this old system really that bad? I am curious to know the correlations between fittest students and best students, if we can define the latter. From my perspective, if the correlations reach over 70%, the system should be deemed as satisfactory.

Yes I am.I don't know where your question from and for. But i wittness my father, as the third son of a very poor family in village, has successfully achieved his dream of a post-PH.D degree with a happy family in Beijing. Every system has it's flaws, so far, if we can't find a better one, let gaokao as it is now.

Yes, you definitely know China and gaokao system well. Apparently we see some fittest are not the best once they are in there college, show up in many aspects. e.g. social activities, suitability to the life without someone monitoring etc. Chinese are notorious for exam, they can adjust quickly and well of new changes of any exam system. An example is New Oriental teaching school, they teach how to conquer GMAT, GRE, TOFEL and many other famous exams, but unluckily, American seems accept they way they are doing business, and allowed it lists in Nasdaq.

China's gaokao is tough, not only because the exam per se. but what's more, you want a decent job, you want a happy family, you want a good life for your child, you need to get in the best universities. otherwise,"diaosi" has no future.

FYI, the United States has gone through a progression of systems for admitting students to college over the last century. (Note: for many colleges there was, and is, a preference given to children of people who attended. Which undercuts the whole merit system for admissions, but does have the advantage for the university of tending to keep graduates donating money to their own college after leaving.)

First, we used a system of letters of recommendation. The advantage was that those writing the letters had (ususally) known the student for some time and could asses both their achievements and potential. The problem was that you had to know someone who could write a good recommendation; preferably someone who the admissions office would recognize and value.

The next step was to use the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) -- something much like the gaokao in concept, although it only lasts a day and is split between a general knowledge section and various specific subject sections. The advantage here was that there was some way to compare students (rather than effectively comparing recommendation writers). The problem was that it placed a lot of stress on rote learning (or being good at guessing answers in multiple-choice questions), at the expense of anything else.

Currently, while the SAT is still in place, admissions offices also look at extracurricular activities in high school, essays from the student, etc. The advantage of this is that it forces students to be more well rounded, not just to spend all of their time studying. The problem is that it puts a premium on certain types of extracurricular activities -- to the point that some people end up doing a lot of things more to check boxes with the admisssions office than because they have any interest or talent for them.

In short, there is no perfect system for deciding who gets into which college. Perhaps the best that can be done is to make sure that there are enough places somewhere for everyone who can benefit from college and wishes to. And to make career opportunities open to people from a variety of colleges, not just a handful. The "elite university" system can produce some wonderfully talented people. But it does cut the country off from a lot of talent which, for a variety of reasons, did not manage to squeeze into one of them. Far better, for the individuals and for the country, if it remains possible for someone from a less distinguished school to get into a great job.

Go to the villages of China, not only big cities, to see the condition of the poor family, to see the enviroment of students studying in. There is no way that these poor students can compete with the rich,powerful families, at least the U.S and Canada style won't work in China.

The US/Canada style is less biased towards rich powerful families. In China, parents with lots of cash send their kids abroad or get Hong Kong residency, where they get extra points to study in the mainland. At least in the US/Canada you could go to a bad high school and still have a chance to make it. In China if your teacher is terrible at teaching the gaokao, there's nothing you can do about it.